03 July 2012 8:25 PM

Michael Gove must not let busybody backbenchers throw him off his stride

Instead of lining up behind Michael Gove’s pre-eminently sensible plan to reform the exam board system, a cross party committee of backbench MPs has decided to oppose him.

In their wisdom, they have decided that there is little tangible evidence that exam boards competing over schools has led to a race to the bottom. Umm. Mr Gove thought it had.

What is more, he had announced a neat and practical solution to the problem - a single exam board for each subject. It would prevent exam boards from competing for schools’ custom by lowering standards and thus making it easier for students to obtain higher grades. It had the virtue of simplicity.

But that, apparently, was just too straightforward for the MPs. Amidst their platitudes on dumbing down, their own proposals involved ever more reviews, including ‘an urgent review of school accountability’ and a reconsideration of league table measures. Round and round the mulberry bush we go again. It could go on forever and there would be no change. How very helpful. Not.

Just about everyone with anything to do with education - the DfE, its quangos and the unions, to say nothing of the Coalition itself - has been determined to muddy the waters of Michael Gove’s reforms, if not to knock them off course altogether. This busybody group of backbenchers is just the latest lot to join in.

The public have lost confidence in our education system. They want action, not platitudes. They don’t want ever more costly and time-wasting bureaucratic reviews. You only have to look at the thousands of comments at the end of every recent article on the subject to know that there is a broad consensus amongst the public about what is wrong. It makes little difference whether the publisher is the Mail, the BBC, the Times, the Telegraph or the Guardian, there is agreement that educational standards have dropped and our system of schooling has gone terribly wrong. Excepting the teachers’ union bosses of course, who live in some sort of parallel universe where the only thing wrong with education is Mr Gove.

Dr Bousted, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, might question, “whether Michael Gove really has children’s best interests at heart, or whether he’s more interested in pushing the UK up the international league tables”, but no one else seriously does. Her vituperative sneer says more about her than him.

A teacher writing on the BBC’s website today summed it up: “As somebody who has worked in a secondary school for 13 years, I have witnessed the exams get easier … Compared to ...1989 about a third of the knowledge has been stripped away..”

The stroppy teachers’ union bosses apart, there is a widespread consensus too that action is needed - and fast. Michael Gove is offering it. Aspects of his reforms may be controversial. But few can question their thrust. They have the virtue of being decisive and straightforward. And no one should be surprised by them. No other Minister set out his stall as clearly as he did before he took office. His were the most coherent, best researched and best informed advance policy proposals. His was a model of time well spent in Opposition.

If anyone doubts me, I suggest they log into the Centre for Policy Studies website for his 2009 lecture. Nobody could have done their homework better. Nobody was more intelligently open to radical ideas. First, he analysed the failings of the system. Then he set out his challenge to the status quo. Raising standards was integral, as was the notion of freeing schools from the stranglehold of local education control, as was his insistence on synthetic phonics. It was a masterclass in the politics of change. He identified the potential of small changes as well as big ones.

In my book, this gave him a mandate. It should have won him the backing of the DfE, the surviving quangos, and most importantly that of the Prime Minister and the rest of the Coalition. Sadly, this was not to be. For it seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry amongst them wants to muddy the water, have their say, or worse, wants to stop him altogether.

The result is that for every reform announced there has been a row, followed by a counter-announcement or backtracking. Each ends in a public relations disaster looking as though Mr Gove is being buffeted here and there and succumbing to pressure.

It has not been an easy ride. From the start he was up against a hostile education establishment and a hostile teacher training and union culture. Then he was made to backtrack by Ofsted over his unannounced inspections edict, one that would have ended the farce of preparation and artifice that inspections had become. Instead of overriding Ofsted, he appeared to retreat from the battleground.

Ofsted and Ofqual have continued to fly solo, begging the question of who exactly is making policy. Ofqual recently announced it would be overhauling GCSE results with new GCSEs by 2015. Then just two weeks later Mr Gove announced his own plan to end decades of falling standards by bringing back 'O' levels and a more vocationally-oriented GCSE. His certitude lasted a day before the now predictable watering down and qualifications came. You would be forgiven for asking what is going on.

No sooner than had Mr Gove made his announcement than the vultures were circling. The educational establishment took to the airwaves in droves. This was a dastardly elitist plot that would create a two-tier system and end social mobility forever. The BBC loved it. Never mind that this ‘coming apart of society’ had already taken place – largely thanks to an equalising education system. Few of the on-air critics were challenged.

Nick Clegg did not waste a moment either before weighing in. He would never tolerate it, he pompously pronounced. Since then it has been less than clear whether Mr Gove is managing to stick to his guns or not. But he has to. He simply cannot afford any more U turns or retractions.

The danger is that public confidence in Mr Gove will soon drop to the level of public confidence in the education system itself. He will no longer be seen as its saviour.

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